France’s Remi Bassereau & Calvin Aye, whose journey at the Joao Pessoa Elite on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour started from the qualifiers, battled through all the way to Sunday’s semifinals. They will take on one of the two Dutch teams that also made it among the last four of the tournament, Steven van de Velde & Alexander Brouwer. The other one, Stefan Boermans & Yorick de Groot, will face Brazilian home favorites Evandro Oliveira & Arthur Mariano Lanci after knocking out the world’s number one team, top-seeded Norwegians Anders Mol & Christian Sorum, on a shaky Saturday.

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In fact, two of the semifinalists already met in the round of 12 on the penultimate day of the competition. Seeded 21^st in the 24-team main draw, Bassereau & Aye stunned second-seeded Boermans & De Groot in a hard-fought straight-setter, 2-0 (21-17, 23-21). In that game, Bassereau put up a fantastic 10 kill blocks towards a match-high 22 points.

In the quarterfinals later on Saturday, the French pair managed a 2-1 (21-19, 18-21, 15-10) victory over another team that arose from the qualifiers, Austria’s Timo Hammarberg & Tim Berger. Before that, the 18^th-seeded Austrians had knocked reigning Olympic champions, fourth-seeded David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig of Sweden, out of contention in a thrilling 2-0 (21-16, 32-30) round-of-12 encounter

Boermans & De Groot, on the other hand, who were one of the two losing teams from the round of 12 who still advanced to the quarterfinals, made a grand return with a 2-0 (22-20, 21-16) upset of the number one team in the FIVB World Ranking, top-seeded Norwegians Mol & Sorum. Mol was the best scorer of the match with 23 points, including six kill blocks and four aces. De Groot led the winners with 20 points, while Boermans added another 15, including five blocks.

One of the semifinals on Saturday, serving off at 10:00 local time (13:00 UTC), will offer a titanic clash between Boermans & De Groot and the highest ranked Brazilian pair, sixth-seeded Evandro & Arthur Lanci. Evandro & Arthur Lanci were the ones who handed 24^th-seeded Portuguese qualifiers Joao Pedrosa & Hugo Campos their first loss of the tournament, 2-0 (21-19, 21-15) in the round of 12. In an all-Brazilian quarterfinal against another team from the qualifiers, 22^nd-seeded Vinicius Freitas & Heitor Barbosa, Evandro & Arthur Lanci produced an emphatic 2-0 (21-16, 21-12) sweep and pushed through to the semis. Arthur Lanci led the way with a match-high 18 points, including five aces. Evandro added another 12, including three aces and three kill blocks

In the first semifinal, starting at 09:00 (12:00), Bassereau & Aye will lock horns with Van de Velde & Alexander Brouwer. The eighth-seeded Dutch duo started their Friday with a 2-0 (21-16, 21-15) shutout of another French pair, 11^th-seeded Teo Rotar & Arnaud Gauthier-Rat, and followed up with a 2-0 (21-19, 21-15) sweep of their quarterfinal against Pedrosa & Campos, who also advanced to that round despite losing in the round of 12. Van de Velde raised seven kill blocks to lead the scorers chart of that match with a total of 18 points. Brouwer aced four times to tally a total of 14 points.

The medal matches will be played later on Sunday, with the third place game beginning at 15:00 (18:00) and the final showdown serving off at 17:00 (20:00).

VW Beach Pro Tour Joao Pessoa Elite: schedule and results

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